AI Hysteria Ignores the Advantages of Technology

While many powerful voices in the tech world are issuing warnings that are borderline apocalyptic about the future of a world where Artificial Intelligence exists, there are other voices that are a lot more balanced, putting hopefulness above hysteria. EU Research Commissioner Carlos Moedas expressed disappointment over the way AI is seen nowadays.

“Nine articles out of ten on AI are negative. Not just negative. Alarmist and panicked, sometimes even hysterical. For me, a techno-optimist, it’s shocking. And very disappointing,” Moedas said during a speech to the European Parliament’s Science and Technology Options Assessment group.

Of course, for those following the topic, what Moedas is saying isn’t surprising at all. It seems that every other day we see a new statement from people like Elon Musk creating fear about AI. Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s most brilliant minds has also expressed concern.

Warnings start from how AI will eliminate many jobs and grow until governments fighting for AI superiority leads to the next World War.

This type of situations are, of course, the extremes. We see a lot of this discourse and not as much as what good artificial intelligence can bring into the world – the new jobs it can create, the advantages we have from using AI-powered tools and devices, the problems AI can solve without the constraints of human thinking. The whole point of Artificial Intelligence is to allow us to find solutions that require outside–the box thinking. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need AI at all, right?

On the other hand, we must not close our eyes to the fact that abuse can certainly happen. As many experts in the field agree – the purpose of any AI, as with any other tool on this planet, depends on who’s running the show. If that person means to do harm, then it’s quite likely that’s what he’s going to create.

We also need to be absolutely aware of the possible abuses that can take place and steer clear of situations that could enable this to happen, or, at the very least, the situations that could turn spell out tragedy.